In the Dock

However, unlike the CPS, there is currently no specific police guidance on this apart from the 2010ACPO’s Position from ACPO Lead’s on Child Protection and Cannabis Cultivation on Children andYoung People Recovered in Cannabis Farms. 330 This guidance requires an update to reflectdevelopments in the past few years. However, even this limited resource, which focuses solely onchildren and cannabis, has not been widely circulated. In the absence of guidance, it can be difficultfor individual officers and police forces to understand their duty with regards to non-criminalisation.Good practice, extending the recommendations in the guidance to adults, was reported in a smallnumber of police forces such as Bristol, where planned cannabis factory raids were carried outtogether with the NGO Unseen to assist in identifying potential victims of trafficking.A recent study on trafficked women in prisons 331 raised additional issues such as the quality andaccess to interpreters both at time of arrest and at the police station; little opportunity for subsequentmeetings to clarify information or examine “no comment” interviews; judgements on the autonomy ofthe victim-suspect; and inferences made from non or later disclosures. Also police are reportedlysometimes wary of trafficked victims who self-identify as this may be viewed as a ploy to enter a falsedefence to avoid culpability.Furthermore, conflicting priorities (e.g. the so-called “war on drugs” versus combating trafficking) mayfurther affect the willingness or ability to identify a trafficking scenario in favour of achieving quickpositive prosecution for drug cultivation and petty crime etc. Indeed, the issue of trafficking is rarelyincorporated in briefings given to police officers before drug raids. Such a focus on police performancebased targets and detection figures, was confirmed by some interviewed law enforcement officers.They stated that their senior management, who knew what trafficking was, did not abandon a chargeagainst a trafficked person for drug possession after a request from officers who were liaising with thetrafficked person. The drugs had been previously introduced and addiction maintained by the traffickerto achieve control over the trafficked person. The officers stated that this reluctance could only beexplained by the performance culture the police force works under.DefenceExisting case law, such as R v O also places a duty on the defence: “[d]efence lawyers must respondby making enquiries, if there is before them credible material showing that they have a client who mayhave been the victim of trafficking, especially a young client.” 332 However, the ATMG research alsoraised concerns about the lack of awareness of trafficking among defence solicitors and barristers tocite trafficking as a ground for an abuse of process application. The Law Society has issued thepractice note Criminal prosecutions of victims of trafficking, 333 though as with the CPS Guidance,awareness of this document amongst practitioners is also limited. Like other CJS actors, there aremisconceptions among criminal lawyers with respect to the nature of trafficking and its definition, andawareness of the Convention. One participant commenting on a case incorrectly responded to stated:“[The defence solicitor] looked into the issue of whether there was any issues of human trafficking but theyhad advised [the trafficked woman] that because she had the [travel] document actually in her possession[at the time of arrest] there wasn’t anything that they could do for her, which was obviously wrong. So the[defence solicitor] had looked into [the trafficking] but they had just totally misinterpreted it, therefore theyhadn’t bothered to try and persuade the prosecution not to continue with the case.”330Association of Chief Police Officers of England, Wales and Northern Ireland, Position from ACPO Lead’s on Child Protection andCannabis Cultivation on Children and Young People Recovered in Cannabis Farms (undated) [online]. Available at:www.ceop.police.uk/Documents/ceopdocs/externaldocs/160810_ACPO_lead's_position_on_CYP_recovered_from_cannabis_farms_FINAL.pdf [last accessed 13 March 2013].331Hales, supra note 309.332R v O, supra note 327, para.26.333The Law Society, Criminal prosecutions of victims of trafficking, 6 October 2011 [online] Available at:www.lawsociety.org.uk/advice/practice-notes/victims-of-trafficking/ [last accessed 25 March 2013].100